


a question to which the answer is not

by ctimene



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: A romcom in three scenes, Alternate Universe - Actors, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Outing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 22:04:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11322642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ctimene/pseuds/ctimene
Summary: It’s been three years and they’re still asking.Of course, Arthur will tell almost anyone, it was an honour — is still an honour — to have been part of something that touched so many people this strongly, that three years since the film opened, fans continue to approach him, politely breathless, with notebooks and phones and cameras, and ask.“Was it true? That you didn’t notice what Merlin Emrys was doing?”





	a question to which the answer is not

**Author's Note:**

> I made the mistake of looking through my old Merlin fic, and now I'm playing with my toys again like it hasn't been eight years. 
> 
> Content note for implied homophobia

It’s been three years and they’re still asking. 

Of course, Arthur will tell almost anyone, it was an honour — is still an honour — to have been part of something that touched so many people this strongly, that three years since the film opened, fans continue to approach him, politely breathless, with notebooks and phones and cameras, and ask.

“Was it true? That you didn’t notice what Merlin Emrys was doing?”

This time it’s in the Pret at Waterloo station, at what feels like an ungodly hour of the morning but is actually 9.30 or so, just after the morning rush hour. He’s waiting for a train to Cornwall, to visit Uther, but Great Western Railway is trolling him personally with delay after delay. Leaves on the fucking line? It’s _May._ So when the baseball cap and sunglasses don’t prove enough of a disguise in the fluorescent glow of the cafe’s lights, he doesn’t duck out after a smile and confirmation of his identity, to be someone’s weird story at work that morning. He stays for the question he can see forming in the woman’s eyes. And, of course, it’s the same as always.

Arthur must have been asked a hundred times. He has not answering down to an art.

See, it was a brilliant stroke that Merlin, in accordance with the most popular fan theories that predated their adaptation of the classic, played George as hopelessly, romantically devoted to Arthur’s Aaron, without ever being asked to by Gaius; and it was an equally brilliant line, spun out by Merlin in one of their first promo interviews, that Arthur, like Aaron, hadn’t even noticed. Oh, the numbers off that twist in the tales — the retweets and notes, the gifsets and BTL heartache that still pours in. Most importantly, the ticket sales.  And Arthur, under the very watchful eyes of Freya and Morgana, had laughed along and played the oblivious idiot and tried to forget how the drama both proved and overshadows the truth: that Arthur is a damn good actor.

So: to the question, and the questioner. Early twenties, dressed professionally but bright eyed and a little pink around the edges. One of Merlin’s, probably — his fans are a tad kinder, a little younger than Arthur’s army of mums. She’d waited for him to finish his pastry, thank God. There are two other girls with her, but she is the only one who has spoken. Her face is open, a smile on her lips, ready for an answer.

Arthur has several go-tos. That Merlin is a tremendously talented actor, one of the greatest he’d had the pleasure to work with — that one skirted the point quite nicely, and had the added virtue of being true. Or that he had been incredibly focused on realising the internal struggle of his own character; also true, but sounded pretentious, and really only half a step from lying by implication. Or he could sidestep it completely with one of his higher wattage smiles — offer a photo and move on. There are plenty of safe answers Arthur could give.

Here’s why he doesn’t: he’s tired. Physically tired — he’s been back in London for two days, nowhere near long enough to adjust from LA, the sunshine, the time difference, the heat and the relentless lag and drive of it. Tired, too, of dodging the question, though it doesn’t even occur to him at the time. Tired, mostly, of pretending he was the oblivious one, that he hadn’t been aware, painfully aware, of Merlin’s eyes on him — like he hadn’t watched the fucking dailies, seen it for himself, and started to hope.

“Was it true? That you didn’t notice what Merlin Emrys was doing?”

 “Of course I noticed,” he snaps (and no amount of carefully collected movie-star cool hides that break), “I just didn’t realise it was a performance.” His fingers flex — lukewarm, milky coffee spills over his knuckles. Between a drop leaving his fingers and hitting the wipe-down floor with a soft plink, he realises what he’s said.

* * *

There’s a camera. There’s always a camera, Morgana, Gaius, even Uther, who hates the damn things, remind him. The clip’s on YouTube in under an hour, his biggest fansite in three, and Pink News by the end of the day. And it’s mostly pure speculation, entirely deniable, but that doesn’t get around the awkwardness of the video, the unmissable twist of his mouth, the white knuckles. The distinct lack of stardom about him.

 _Well,_ his father says, after one four-hour train journey crammed with desperate phone calls cut off by tunnels and signal blackspots, _that’s torn it._

“Still,” Uther adds with a sniff as Arthur paces the front room, trying to get Freya on the line, “you can always go back to theatre. Do some real acting.”

“Thanks,” he says, curt — he’s no energy to fight his father, not _today_  — and thank God, Leon calls him at just the right moment to distract him.

“Has Nimue call-”

“I’m keeping on top of it,” Leon says, which means yes. Nimue is the terrifying producer of his latest masterpiece, and her calling is the second worst possible outcome. It means LA is rattled. He’s not due to promote the film for months — clearly they think this will cast a long shadow. Which, yeah, of course it will, but couldn’t the universe have let him hope?

“Shit,” he swears softly down the throne. Uther shoots him a disapproving look over the arts section of the _FT_ , so Arthur strides out into the hall.   

“Speculation,” Leon reassures him, almost cooing down the phone. “It’s just speculation.”

“Doesn’t help that most of them are right though, does it?” Arthur barks back, around a sandpaper laugh. 

“It’s not ideal.” Leon hums a few tuneless notes to himself. “Has he-”

“No.” Arthur had sent Merlin a text as soon as he’d realised his mistake: _I’m sorry,_ sitting short and almost inexplicable after his last, a long ramble of a message reviewing Merlin’s last play, by turns rapturous and obsessively critical. ( _THE BLOCKING,_ it ended, with an assortment of punctuation for emphasis.) Merlin hadn’t replied to that one, either.

Arthur can’t decide if hearing from Merlin would be worse than the dread roiling inside him from the radio silence, but he’s saving that ‘worst possible outcome’ slot for when (if) he does. That, or-

His phone buzzes. “Shit, shit, Leon, Morgana’s on the other line.”

“Ignore it,” Leon says, a firm note to his voice. “She knows she’s supposed to come through me.”

“As Merlin’s agent, yes. But not as my-” The phone in the hall starts ringing and Uther stalks past him to answer it before Arthur can stop him. That his father is a sadist has been speculated by most theatre reviewers who sat through his production of Lear; Arthur confirms their suspicions as he holds out the receiver with his mildest expression of vindictive glee.

“Arthur, it’s your sister.”

He takes it. There's no avoiding it. “Morgana.”

“Arthur.” She's not yelling. He's… more than a little surprised.

There's a few seconds of dead silence on the line, before the weight of responsibility in Arthur's stomach forces some words out. Not, it must be said, his most gracious words. “I've already apologised-”

“I know.” Morgana cuts him off mid protest, and the odd thing is, she doesn't raise her voice. She's a little sharp, perhaps, but they're always sharp with each other, too many years of being used as weapons by their parents to ever come together without a clang. They've grown past Gorlois’s hurt, Uther’s cruelty, Elaine’s lies and Ygraine’s death and into their own pettinesses, cast in each other’s shadows, unable to converse without a few barbs, an eyeroll or two, a veneer of sarcasm to hide the fact they're still not sure if they can get along.

“I know,” Morgana says. “I know you, Arthur. I know it's the first thing you would have done.” And Arthur has to remember that she loves him, as fiercely as he does her, and loves her all the better for it.

“Did he say-”

“I called you first,” she answers, and that’s surprising too, because she’s professional to a fault, and her client should be the priority. “He’s coming into the office in ten.” Ah. A face to face. Because it’s that bad. Shit.  “He’s going to ask, Arthur, what do you want me to tell him?”

He doesn’t follow. “What?”

She tsks impatiently down the phone. “He’ll ask me if you were in love with him. If you still are. And I’ll lie, if you ask me to.”

He laughs. “I think the cat’s out of the bag on that one, Morgana.”

“He won’t see it that way. It’s all speculation, remember.” So she and Leon have agreed a party line. Good. “I’ll say what you want. I owe you one.” She does, but Arthur never thought she’d admit it. It’s been a long running joke, trying to call in the favour he paid her when he snuck her into the dress rehearsal at Rada, two days before the other agents and assistants saw the showcase, and gave her the names to look out for: Lance du Lac, Gwen Smith, Merlin Emrys. Because she couldn’t sign him, that’d be one act of nepotism too far, but he wasn’t going to let the best slip through her fingers.

“Huh. I thought I’d get a choice on calling that in.”

“I’m trying to give you one. Do you want me to say yes?”

He imagines it, Morgana dark-eyed and serious as Merlin fidgeted in an ergonomic chair, nothing but the fatal words to fill her overly large, gleaming-white office. He pictured how Merlin’s face would fall, not into anger, or disgust, but pity, wide and guileless, and how he’d be unable to look Morgana in the eye, would shift to her unkillable plants, and then to the huge print of the sad watery bint from the miserable Tennyson poem, which come to think of it was a bit too apt for the whole scenario. But Arthur can’t imagine what Merlin will say, and he knows he’d never bring himself to ask. And he has to know.

No, he realises. Morgana can’t be the one to confirm it. It’d strip away the last bit of pride he has left. And he dragged Merlin into this, via the internet. The least he can do is confirm it himself. And perhaps there’s a flare of anger, that even this, this _explosion,_ can’t get his ostensible best friend to drop him a line, a howler, a bloody _legal threat_ , anything other than silence. Perhaps it’s that  vicious heat that sets his teeth against each other when he replies.

“Don’t. Tell him- tell him he’s got my number, he can ask me himself if he wants to know.”

If, of course, Merlin has the balls to pick up the sodding phone.

“Alright. Oh, and tell Uther to go fuck himself.”

“Morgana sends her love,” he calls into the living room, and the pleased hum he receives in return is further proof Arthur deserved that sodding Bafta, Gawain be damned.

* * *

Uther keeps reading the papers too smugly for words, and Arthur’s phone goes horribly silent as agents and publicists do their work and his friends try to figure out the right tone for — commiserating? Congratulating? — an accidental outing. After ten minutes he can’t bear the ticking of the clock and heads down the garden, to where the lawn turns yellow with sand and salt, and then down the steps hewn into the cliff face, to the tiny bay below, and finally down to the sea. Uther had paid double what he should have for the cove, for the smile on Ygraine’s face as she stood up to her ankles in the waves. 

Arthur can’t make himself smile when he does the same, but once he’s changed into his wetsuit and grabbed his board from the shack, his grimace eases a little, even though the water’s freezing. The wind’s up, but the waves are still a bit shite, the bay too small to let them build really high. Still, it’s better than surfing in California, for his money — having to fight away the chill with exertion, and the silence bar the sea and the gulls, and the dark Cornish cliffs an ever present threat to keep his mind keen.

It works, almost, as a distraction — the cold and the churn and the thunder of his pulse as he burns the chill from his veins — until, of course, he remembers that it’s not only his own career he’s sliced and diced and served up for the hungry hordes. No, he had to go and land Merlin in it as well. And maybe their friendship had only wilted, not died, maybe his ugly lovesick outburst had been forgivable, forgettable, but the career hit? Actors had gone to war for less.  

Guilt doesn’t sit easily on Arthur, never has, but he lets it rest on him now, indulges it as he floats on the board. Falling in love with Merlin had had two distinct phases, onstage and off it — Pirandello and pints — and the thought that he might’ve robbed him of the roles he deserves is enough to get Arthur skirting too close to the rocks for comfort, teeth gritted against the wind.

Eventually, self-preservation prevails. He’s not sure how long he spends in the water, but it’s long enough for his phone to have picked up three missed calls from Leon (and one reassuring text with all the need-to-knows) and a single message from Morgana: _I don’t owe you any more._ Nothing, of course, from Merlin — but Arthur can’t be angry at him now. No, no, it’s strictly self-loathing from now on.

Case in point: an overblown reproach for forgetting to bring a bloody towel, because naturally the spares that should be in the beach hut have vanished. He gathers his things to head back to the house and idly wonders if Uther will have moved on to being smug while reading The Times now, until he reaches the top of the cliff and is drawn up short just where the lawn becomes scrub.

There’s a man in a suit striding down from the house. For a daft moment, Arthur thinks it’s Uther, but he never comes down to the cove, tries to avoid the sea completely, from a house surrounded on three sides by cliffs, because he’s a mad contrary bastard who loved his wife too much. But the man’s too thin, too dark-haired, too _Merlin,_ and by the time Arthur realises that there’s not much more he can do beyond stopping dead, dropping his shoes and trying to look a little less drippy. His stomach twists itself in knots and his toes flex in the sand, but he can’t make his legs work.

Merlin jogs the last few yards, and Arthur’s pretty sure he won’t get punched, but calls out “I’m sorry,” against the wind anyway. Then he’s just there, right there, and yep, there’s the pity, in wide eyes that shine almost gold in the glare of the low sun. “I’m sorry,” Arthur says again, as honest as he can make it sound without acting.

“It’s okay,” Merlin says, and Christ, he can’t believe him, but it’s a relief just to hear his voice. Arthur’s missed him these past few months. Merlin takes another breath but says nothing, and Arthur becomes uncomfortably aware of the fact he’s wearing a soaking wetsuit. “I got your address from Morgana,” he offers eventually, the answer to a question Arthur really doesn’t care about. Then, before Arthur can fall prostrate and beg forgiveness, Merlin starts again: “Look, fuck, no, see- I had a script, this is why they don’t let me ad lib-”

“Shall we start from the top then?” Arthur asks, with a ghost of a smile, like it’s any number of rehearsals, laughing themselves through the lines. “Act I, Scene i…” He leads Merlin in, voice smooth and steady, and his nerves jangling.

“It wasn’t a performance.”

It takes Arthur a stupefying second to realise what Merlin’s talking about, and another to understand what it means. Everything with them is a bit of a performance. Except, it seems, that. And possibly, probably, this. “Oh. So-”

“Yeah.”

“Back then?”

“Also now.”

“Right. Yeah, I guess, you came to Cornwall, I could have inferred that. You watch too many romcoms.”

“You’re _in_ too many.”

“Nice line, _Mer_ lin, was that in the script?”

“No, to be honest the script didn’t get much beyond I adore you, you fucking pillock, so-”

Arthur decides some stage directions will improve this utter disaster of a scene, so he shows Merlin exactly why he had a romcom phase (a very over romcom phase). He drops his phone in the grass, and a half step forwards lets him cup Merlin’s face.

It’d be a terrible kiss for cinema, the wetsuit squeaking, Merlin’s killer cheekbones hidden from the camera, the tone caught awkwardly between sweet and desperate. Maybe the setting would sell it — cliffs, waves, a setting sun and a windswept look — but any decent director would want a second take. But for them, just them, it’s good. Room to improve, maybe, but that’s what rehearsal is for.

Merlin pulls back, just slightly, and clears his throat. “This doesn’t get you off the hook for, you know, everything. I mean, I’ll be fine, it’s theatre, I was out to everyone but the fans, but it was still supremely shitty to do.”

Arthur hangs his head, although they’re still close enough that he more or less ends up resting their foreheads together. “I know. And I’d be sorrier, if the consequences weren’t so good.”

“I’ll work up to being properly angry when you’re not so wet and I’m not so happy,” Merlin concedes, before kissing him again, soft but thorough. Arthur leaves damp patches on his charcoal suit that stain it black, and Merlin’s shivering when he pulls away.  It doesn’t stop a sly grin forming on his face, though, and Arthur’s stomach untwists a little more at the familiarity of it.

“How long?”

Arthur groans. “Oh Christ, no, do we have to be absolute _girls_ about it?”

“Gwen’d demolish you for that.”

“She already has. I don’t know-” he knows _exactly_ “-end of the second term. _Six Characters._ ”

“Really?”

“What can I say, greasepaint really brings out your eyes. You?”

“ _‘Merlin Emrys? Well, at least it’ll go down well with Equity’_ ” His impression of Arthur is, as ever, shocking for a man who claims acting as a profession, and Arthur has half a mind to remind him of that, but he’s more distracted by the fact that it’s the first thing he ever said to him. He gapes, but then he spots the light dancing in Merlin’s eyes and realises he’s being teased. “Maybe not right then. I missed it, at first. But the film… it was too easy to pretend. And then I realised I wasn’t.”

“It wasn’t a performance,” Arthur repeats softly. Then: “So really, you should probably give back that SAG, eh?”

“Fuck off!”


End file.
